As the Gaza war rages, Egypt fears for its stability
FROM 10M-HIGH walls and watchtowers Egypt’s soldiers look out on the war unfolding in Gaza. Over half of the coastal enclave’s population of over 2m are on the move, as Israeli tanks advance into it from the north and east and its warplanes and artillery continue their bombardment. Many Palestinians are heading towards the border with Egypt in search of food, electricity, water and safety.
Egyptian calls for Israel to open the crossing at Rafah to allow humanitarian aid to enter have gone largely unheeded. Only 84 lorries of medicine and food have entered Gaza since the fighting began, says the Egyptian Red Cross. Meanwhile Egypt is reinforcing the border area with tanks and troops, determined to keep Palestinians out. “Palestinians and Arabs would not experience a second naqba,” said Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, a former Egyptian foreign minister and secretary-general of the Arab League, referring to the Palestinian exodus that accompanied Israel’s war of independence in 1948.
As the fighting escalates, Egypt is grappling with a trio of fears. First, how to manage growing pressure to accommodate Palestinians. A rush of refugees from Gaza could rekindle Egypt’s conflict with the Bedouin in the Sinai and revive the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamists who have long been the biggest internal threat to Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the country’s field-marshal-turned-president. Fears of instability could damage the economy, which is already foundering. Added to that is a sense that their president is turning their country from a regional heavyweight into little more than a bystander.
Ever since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Egypt has struggled to rebuff its neighbour’s efforts to make it responsible for the territory, as it was between 1948 and 1967. When Israel imposed a blockade after leaving Gaza in 2005, Egypt followed suit. When Palestinians smashed a high metal border fence in 2008 and flocked into Sinai, Egypt pushed them back and fortified its frontiers. But the current humanitarian pressure at the border is the greatest test of its resolve to keep Israel’s Gaza problem from spilling into Egypt.
It is already feeling the impact. Egypt’s Bedouin mainly live in the Sinai, next to Gaza, and have long been marginalised by the country’s rulers. They have waged a decade-long rebellion against the central government, briefly linking up with jihadists from Islamic State, and killing hundreds of soldiers. Egyptian officials claim at last to have quelled their revolt but the Bedouin are protesting again. Some accuse Mr Sisi of preparing to implement a new version of “the deal of the century”, a plan for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians put forward by the Trump administration, which according to some sources involved resettling some Palestinians in the Sinai. Today there are rumours such a resettlement might take place in exchange for a large dollop of much-needed debt forgiveness (figures of $20-30bn are circulating).
The president’s men say it is a non-starter. “It’s a red line that can’t be bought for money,” says Muhammad Rashad, a former Egyptian spook. Mr Sisi insists he will resist “the liquidation of the Palestinian cause”. But the Bedouin insist the facts on the ground tell a different story. Mr Sisi, they say, has turned their land into a closed military zone, cleared around 50,000 Bedouin out of an area stretching 13km south of the border, and cordoned it off with cement walls and military checkpoints. He has built an entire city—New Rafah—to accommodate an influx of Palestinians, say Bedouin activists, but barred Egyptians and Bedouin from living there. “The government is arresting anyone who tries to go back,” says a local activist. “The Bedouin have a right to return, too.”
Then there are Mr Sisi’s old foes, the Islamists. A decade ago he toppled their elected president, incarcerated tens of thousands of their members and chased many more abroad. But the credibility of Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has risen in parts of the Middle East since it punctured Israel’s defences and rampaged through its towns. If Gaza’s Palestinians flock into Egypt, worries Mr Sisi, the many Hamas members among them will bring their ideology with them.
He has already warned that new refugee camps in Sinai could serve as a base for jihadist attacks on Israel. Egypt’s long-suppressed jihadist and Islamist movements might also get a boost, predict analysts in Cairo, reinvigorating notions of “resistance” against oppressors, Mr Sisi included. “The Brotherhood could regain their legitimacy,” says Ahmed Aboudouh, a consultant on Egypt at Chatham House, a London-based think-tank.
Trouble is also brewing closer to Cairo. So far protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza have been smaller in Arab cities than those in the West. Egyptians worry about the consequences of widespread unrest. And the security forces have beefed up their intimidating presence. Still, after a decade of quiet, the Palestinian cause has brought some Egyptians back onto Cairo’s streets. As in the West Bank and Jordan, officials fear that protests for Palestinians could turn against the regime. After Friday prayers in Egypt on October 20th, chants of “Free Palestine” morphed into cries for a “loaf of bread”. Demonstrators pushed past large numbers of police to enter Tahrir Square, the heart of Egypt’s revolution in 2011. Dozens were arrested. But it is only a matter of time before more protests form.
The regional turmoil might also harm Egypt’s beleaguered economy. The IMF has warned the war could spook foreign investors and has again downgraded the country’s growth outlook. Tourism had been booming, but October’s air traffic to Egypt is down by a quarter year on year. On the black market, Egypt’s pound continues its long slide against the dollar.
For now, Mr Sisi has tried to placate his people. Some say he is already on the campaign trail, ahead of elections—which will be surely rigged—in December. In rousing speeches to his armed forces, he has described the Palestinians as “the most important cause of our region” and warned the war could jeopardise Egypt’s longstanding peace with Israel. But if Mr Sisi merely watches the invasion of Gaza, the war could dent his image as a strongman.
He likes to compare himself to Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader who broke through Israel’s defences in 1973. To mark the 50th anniversary of that war, Mr Sisi staged military parades in the desert. But he held fire when Egyptian soldiers were wounded in a strike near the Rafah crossing that Israel described as an accident. He has also shrunk from sending aid across the border into Gaza, and instead accepted Israel’s tight restrictions on the flow. Egyptian officials appear unwilling to do anything which might jeopardise its 44-year-old peace treaty with Israel and the provision of American military aid it guarantees.
As Egypt shies away from involvement, its position in the region looks vulnerable. Qatar is now the main patron of Hamas and Gaza. The tiny Gulf emirate led negotiations over hostage releases. The United Arab Emirates has jeopardised Egypt’s role as the Arab world’s prime interlocutor with Israel. At the same time, Egypt has lost much of its former diplomatic heft. The “peace” summit it organised on October 21st came to nothing, after Western observers disapproved of calls for a ceasefire.
Some still believe Egypt can play a role. With Israel’s army dominating Gaza’s north, largely emptied of its population, Western diplomats suggest that in the medium-term Arab states, including Egypt, might assume responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in the south. They are also discussing whether Gulf states might finance a combination of UN agencies and peacekeepers led by Egypt to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Hamas’s rule. But Egypt seems in no rush to be sucked into the quagmire of Gaza when it faces so many problems at home. The country likes to call itself umm al-dunia, the mother of the world. But, says an Arab political commentator in Cairo, “it’s not what it was”. ■